Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whitaker, who won lightweight boxing gold at the 1984 Olympics and then was champion in four weight classes as a professional, died Sunday night after being hit by a driver in Virginia Beach, Virginia, police there said.

Whitaker, 55, was walking at the intersection of Northampton Boulevard and Baker Road around 10 p.m. when he was hit by a driver who remained on the scene.

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"When officers arrived on scene they located an adult male victim who had been hit by a vehicle," a Virginia Beach Police spokesman told WTVR-TV. "[Whitaker] succumbed to his injuries on the scene."

Devon Whitaker, his youngest son, told the Virginian-Pilot that visibility may have been an issue.

Pernell "Sweetpea" Whitaker eyes his opponent Carlos Bojorquez during the second round of their bout at Caeser's Tahoe Whitaker hurt his shoulder in the second round and was unable to continue after the fourth on April 27, 2001 (Scott Sady / The Virginian-Pilot)

"I guess he was wearing dark clothes, the road was dark and the driver didn't see him," he said.

A native of Hampton, Virginia, Whitaker was known as a supremely elusive southpaw, one of the best defensive fighters in history, who turned pro after winning gold at the 1984 Los Angeles Games and won his first major belt with a unanimous-decision win over Greg Haugen for the IBF lightweight title in February, 1989. Whitaker unified his titles by beating Jose Luis Ramirez six months later for the WBC title and then scoring a first-round knockout of Juan Nazario in August, 1990 for the WBA belt. Ring magazine named him its boxer of the year in 1989.

"You couldn't hit Pernell in the backside with a handful of buckshot," author and historian Bert Sugar, who rated Whitaker No. 48 in a book on the 100 greatest boxers, told the Virginian-Pilot in 2006. "To me, a man wins a fight by imposing his will on the other man. When he did what he did and did it well, he imposed his will on everybody."

Pernell "Sweetpea" Whitaker eyes his opponent Carlos Bojorquez after getting knocked into the ropes in the first round of their bout at Caeser's Tahoe Whitaker hurt his shoulder in the second round and was unable to continue after the fourth on April 27, 2001 (Scott Sady / The Virginian-Pilot)

Whitaker successfully defended those titles six times, the longest-ever run for a unified lightweight champion, before moving up in weight classes and winning titles in the junior welterweight, welterweight and light middleweight classes. But his later career was overshadowed by drug use: A 1997 win was overturned after Whitaker tested positive for cocaine, and he served two years in prison on a drug possession charge after his final bout in 2001. More recently, in 2014 Whitaker won a court decision allowing him to evict his mother and two siblings out of the home he bought for them in 1984, which the former boxer said he needed to do to pay off debts.

Whitaker later became a trainer, guiding the likes of heavyweight contender Calvin Brock and Zab Judah, who won the IBF welterweight title under Whitaker's guidance in 2011.

“I loved PW and he loved me - there was no doubt,” Kathy Duva, whose Main Events company promoted Whitaker throughout his career and who remained close to him after his retirement, told ESPN’s Dan Rafael. “He was this person who was only comfortable in the ring. He had demons, but when he was in the ring, that was when he was in control and when he was happy and when he was the very best at what he did, and he wanted to show that to everybody.”